


The Loneliness of the Long Distance Gunner

by darkrose



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-22
Updated: 2006-07-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrose/pseuds/darkrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard out here for a sniper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loneliness of the Long Distance Gunner

It's always been different for me.

Selphie and Quistis and Zell and Squall and Seifer--and even Rinoa most of the time--have to stand face to face with the person they're killing. Sometimes, I can get in close, but more often than not I'm on a rooftop a hundred yards away with a sniper rifle and scope, preparing to take someone down. On a good assignment I have time to study my target, to learn his routine and where he likes to stop for coffee in the mornings and for how long and where along her route she speeds so she'll make it into the office on time and what he wears and who she sees and how they think so I can stop it all with a single bullet.

The others are soldiers. I'm an assassin.

Some days I think Squall has a hell of a lot to answer for. He's the one who planted the SeeD--get it?--in Edea's head when he went back during Time Compression. He gave her the idea to train a bunch of children to kill without compunction and without remorse, plugging the raw power of ancient deities into our heads to make us damn near invincible, and unable to remember what we had for breakfast the day before. Our childhoods were the blood sacrifice; our consciences offered up in exchange for the safety of a future we already knew we would save because we knew we already had. Trabia and Galbadia and Balamb Gardens forged us into living weapons and honed our edge on monsters and dead soldiers--and made a tidy little profit while doing so.

I'm a tool with one purpose: to kill. That's one of only two things I know how to do, and that's why when the mission is over, the target eliminated and the money paid, I turn to the other thing I do well. Burying myself in another warm, living body, having someone buried in me, squirming and writhing and panting and gasping and coming...it's not creating life, but it's not dealing death, either. It doesn't matter who it is or which position I'm in as long as it lets me lose myself and stop thinking about the swift intake of a held breath, the click of a safety and the crack of a rifle. Let me tell you, sex is even better than a GF for forgetting things you hope you won't remember in the morning.

So I do my research and I take out my target, safe from the blood and the screams and the pain as long as I don't think about it. I slip back into the shadows and into someone's--anyone's--bed, and I tell myself that it doesn't matter when the others look at me and roll their eyes and shake their heads. Irvine Kinneas, ladies and gentlemen: Garden's best sniper and Garden's biggest slut.

You want to know how I deal with the "loneliness of the sharpshooter"?

I make sure I'm never alone.


End file.
